Making toy computers

Basu · 2007-02-07 04:52:52

I recently came across the Python for Fun book on ibiblio and I loved the "toy computer" simulator and related stuff. i was wondering if anyone knew of any similar simple virtual machines that a semi-intermediate programmer could implement, play around with and learn a few things in the process? Any theoretical material would be nice as well (if it's not too heavy)
Thanks
Basu

iBertus · 2007-02-07 05:58:39

I suppose with something like QEMU or Xen you could implement an entire operating system and tweak away. Now, I'm not really familiar with any virtual machine programming kits, but I've never looked.

Basu · 2007-02-07 06:04:07

I know about QEMU and Xen, but I'm looking for something far more simpler. More of a toy than a real computer.

e_tank · 2007-02-09 07:00:56

do you mean you just want a virtual machine environment to work in (i take it you want to have direct access to the hardware)? if so how about the game boy advance? there are tons of resources and tutorials available for it. it runs off of an arm7tdmi processor which has has a small and straight forward instruction set, a good one to start out on.
the rest of the machine's hardware is pretty simple as well. if you would be happy with just plotting pixels it won't take much code to you get you up and running, though it does have quite a bit of features so if you want something you can write your own vm (emulator) for you might want to pick something else as it would be a big job (there's a lot to keep track of).

anyway there are already a few emulators available for it on linux, there's an sdl port of vba, though the last few times i've checked it had some issues and its code looked like it was in real need of a cleanup, but the debugger is still useful (you may also want to try the win32 version through wine which has a debugger as well although it doesn't support breakpoints like the sdl version, at least i don't think so). also the debugger has a few quirks of its own. mednafen includes a port of vba which runs better, though i don't think they included the debugger

let me know if this sounds like what you're looking for and i'll throw a few resources your way, along with a quick example program that will do minimal hardware setup so you can start playing around

Last edited by e_tank (2007-02-09 07:01:55)

Arch Linux

#1 2007-02-07 04:52:52

Making toy computers

#2 2007-02-07 05:58:39

Re: Making toy computers

#3 2007-02-07 06:04:07

Re: Making toy computers

#4 2007-02-09 07:00:56

Re: Making toy computers

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